Tech in 2023: The top trends to watch closely this year
Here are the emerging trends you should expect over the next 12 months, and how it might affect you and your business.
Jan 24, 2023 • 3 Minute Read
Every year, the landscape of technology is different, and it’s our job to keep on top of it. In this article, we cover the emerging trends that will shape the global landscape over the next year, and how it might affect you and your business.
Read on to learn about the top tech trends to expect over the next 12 months.
The big three for ‘23: (Multi)cloud, cybersecurity, and data
No matter what report you open, whether it’s from Gartner, StackOverflow, or Pluralsight, these three trends are emerging as the dominant themes for 2023.
Multicloud
Cloud specialists have never been as in demand, especially as the majority of businesses are now using multiple cloud providers. That’s a bold claim, so let me drop some solid stats to help back that up:
While 75% of organizations are building new products and features in the cloud by default, only 8% of technologists claim extensive experience with cloud-related tools.
According to Gartner, more than 80% of organizations use more than one cloud provider (compared to 49% in 2017), with 75% of organizations defaulting to multi cloud environments.
Gartner also listed working with cloud environments as one of the top 10 critical skills for technology professionals. Database management and traditional on-prem skillsets now fall into the “stagnant skills” category.
The annual average wage for cloud specialists worldwide is incredibly high due to low availability and low applicants per role. In the United States, the average cloud architect makes $169k USD. There are also regionally high wages for APAC and EMEA.
If you’re a tech leader working in a multicloud environment, having a multicloud strategy is becoming increasingly important. And if you’re a tech professional, there’s several reasons to become multicloud fluent. Learning cloud computing is becoming a synergetic skill for developers in 2023, with technologies like Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and serverless becoming business critical.
Cybersecurity
Just like cloud, cybersecurity has become a field defined by increasing demand and short supply.
In January 2023, there were more than 750,000 cybersecurity-rated job postings open across the United States, with only only enough professionals to fill 68% of these roles. And this isn’t just a national shortage — there are similar shortages in cities like Paris, London, and Sydney.
In Pluralsight’s State of Upskilling 2022, tech professionals said the top skills gap was cybersecurity, beating out cloud computing as the number one gap for the first time in 2022.
IT Security Professionals were also the most in-demand for important tech initiatives, according to the ITC 2022 Future Enterprise Resiliency & Spending Survey.
No matter what industry your business is in, cybersecurity is relevant, especially as businesses move to the cloud by default. The cloud is an immensely useful and powerful tool, and while it can be more secure than on-prem, it’s also easier to create a less secure set-up if you don’t have knowledge of cybersecurity. This can lead to potential breaches and incidents — the sort you read about in the news, and don’t want your business involved in.
Data
“Data — isn’t all digital tech about data?” And that’s a fair point! When we say this, we mean those fields that are deep into data: things like AI, ML, and data science. Here’s some data to showcase this trend:
According to Gartner, AI was the second-most in demand skill set in 2022 in terms of job openings, with a 14.3% increase in U.S. job demand.
The global AI software market is estimated to grow at approximately 54% every year.
Employment of data scientists is projected to grow 36% from 2021 to 2031. Demand growth for this field increased by over 7% last year.
Global organizations ranked AI development and training as their third-most “critical technology and human skill to hire for or develop in the next 18 months”
Our top list of skills to learn in 2023
Based on our research of these trends and others, we compiled a list of skills technologists should look into in the year ahead. You can read all about it in our article: Pluralsight’s top tech skills for 2023.
Soft skills are also becoming more important in tech
Creativity, collaboration, analysis. Businesses aren’t just hiring people based on their tech talents, but are increasingly looking for soft skills that make them effective employees. To learn more about this list, check out our article: Work in tech? The top soft skills to develop in 2023
Tech certifications are still an elevator to success
If you look at Pluralsight’s most in-demand courses in 2022, you’ll find they’re dominated by certification prep, and there’s a good reason for that. 35% of people reported a wage increase after earning a certification, and the salaries of certified tech professionals are 8 percent higher than non-certified professionals.
We broke down the top certifications for each field to take in 2023 — cloud, cybersecurity, AI/ML, dev, and others — along with the average salary of people who have those certs. To read these lists, check out our article: Pluralsight’s top tech certifications for 2023
